


Five wrong endings

by julad



Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Imported, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2014-06-15
Packaged: 2018-02-04 17:29:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1787200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julad/pseuds/julad
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Just imported, cleanup and tagging needed</p>
    </blockquote>





	Five wrong endings

**Author's Note:**

> Just imported, cleanup and tagging needed

Oh man. Well, I got _some_ work done. Now I have wasted two hours and can get back to work.

I think the previous Five Things is gonna be called Five New Beginnings. This may or may not be a series of procrastination-fics. Oooh, iTunes music is relevant for a change! Can I take a moment to highly highly highly recommend the live acoustic version of this song? AFAIK it's a bootleg, but it's on P2P, and it's just gorgeous.

**Five Wrong Endings**

1.

Even though Justin knew the sex would be the last thing to go bad with them, he was still surprised when it went bad. After all, they still got each other off when he couldn't say a civil word to Brian, when Brian wouldn't sleep in the same bed as him, when they were leaving careful notes in the kitchen to avoid being in the loft at the same time. But walking home alone from Babylon, balls aching and irritated, Justin was forced to admit that even the sex was, finally, gone.

"Justin," Brian said, and Justin turned to around to see Brian walking behind him, hunched in his jacket, taking a long fast drag from his cigarette.

"Hey," Justin said tiredly, and moved aside to let Brian walk beside him.

Brian finished the cigarette and threw the butt in the gutter. "So," he said, sounding resigned. "Do you want to walk away, or should I?"

It wasn't really a question. It was permission, and a plea. Justin looked up at him. "I'll go."

Brian nodded. "I'll have Mel and Ted divide the assets."

 

* * * * *

2.

The other guy wasn't Ethan, but he was close enough. Brian wasn't fucking tricks in his face, but he might as well have been. The party was Deb's sixtieth, and Brian had thrown it at Woody's, not Babylon.

When history repeats itself, the details are irrelevant.

 

* * * * *

3.

Brian came home from the hospital and poured himself a drink.

"Is everything all right?" Justin asked, but it was a stupid question. He knew the signs by now, and this time the scan results hadn't been good. So they were back on the merry-go-round, resetting the clock: surgery, recovery, radium therapy, and then sit back and wait for the five years of all-clear that never seemed to come.

Brian opened his briefcase, pulled out the envelope, handed it to Justin. "Lungs and liver."

Shit.

Brian finished his drink and poured another. When he finished that, he headed for the bathroom, stripping slowly. When he came out, dressed for the clubs, Justin was still staring at the scans, amorphous grey blobs that were meaningless, once.

"I'm going out," Brian said, and then knelt in front of Justin, buried his face in Justin's lap. Justin stroked his hair, which was still dry and brittle from the last round of treatment. "I may be gone some time."

Justin had heard this before, and it still made his heart skip. He'd said all of this before, and he still said it again. "You'll be home by curfew, asshole. I love you. I'm staying with you. I'm not going anywhere and neither are you."

"I've had enough," Brian mumbled.

"I haven't," Justin said, and kept talking, because he wasn't bowing out now, and neither was Brian, and they were going to be together, until the bitter end.

 

* * * * *

4.

After a few years, it seemed to Justin that all they did was bitch at one another about Brian's drinking.

It should have stopped the first time Brian called him The Warden. It should have ended when Brian came home drunk and threw the fruit bowl at him. Justin tried to keep Brian's drinking under control, but the more he poured down the sink, the more Brian poured down his throat. Justin tried to take him to an AA meeting, tried to get him to read books on alcoholism, tried to get him talk about why he needed to drink.

"Because you won't get off my fucking case," Brian snapped, and stormed off to Babylon.

Michael didn't see a problem. "Justin," he said, more than a little annoyed, "you should know by now that Brian is not an alcoholic. He's drinking more because you're making his life hell." Michael apologised for Brian, even when Brian split Justin's lip for demanding that he be home by ten every night.

"If Brian has a drinking problem," Lindsay said to Justin, putting ice on it, "he'll come around in his own time. He _knows_ alcoholism, Justin. He grew up with it." She put the icepack down and sighed. "He doesn't _want_ to stop drinking, but the second he thinks he has a drinking problem, he'll stop."

Justin couldn't believe it. Not even Ted and Blake would agree that if Brian had a drinking problem, he wouldn't _want_ to see it. They all seemed to think Brian had some power of invincibility. They put him on a pedestal, immune from their own faults. "He's as fucked up as they come," Emmett conceded, "a high-functioning fuckup, but Sweetie, there's a difference between fucked up and addicted."

Brian didn't drink for a month, to prove to Justin that he didn't need it, but he was in a bad temper the whole time, and as soon as the month was over he went to the clubs and got more drunk than Justin had ever seen him. Justin didn't believe for a second that he'd been dry for that long, anyway.

Deb sat him down one evening and lectured him for an hour. "I love you like my own damn kid," she said, hand on one hip, shaking a finger at him, "but this stops right fucking now, do you understand me?" She didn't let Justin get a word in to explain. "If you and Brian want to work out your problems," she concluded, "you should have a good hard think about the hell you're putting him through."

Justin kept trying to break though to Brian, control his destructive behaviour, get him to admit that he had a problem. Brian spent more time away on business, away at conferences, further and further away from Justin.

It didn't occur to Justin to wonder if that was what he wanted all along.

 

* * * * *

 

5.

"You wanna get married?" Brian asked, collapsing on top of him, high as a kite and wasted as all fuck. They were both at the worn-out end of a weeklong bender, night after night of drinking and fucking and dancing and screaming for joy at the legalisation of gay marriage. Justin was drunk out of his mind, and couldn't tell if it was a proposal or just a question.

"Dunno," he managed, burying his face in Brian's neck. "Yes," he admitted, as a bubble of happiness inside him swelled until it burst. "Yes, Brian, yes."

"I wanna marry my Shunshine," Brian said, and broke out in deranged laughter.

Justin sat up dizzily and tried to focus on his face. " _Really?_ "

"Fuck if I know," Brian slurred, and buried his face into the pillow, still laughing.

Brian woke up long enough in the morning to call them both in sick, and they woke up slowly in the evening, as the setting sun bathed the loft in gold. It was quiet and peaceful and bright and warm, a gentle intimacy of tired muscle and bone.

"I'd marry you," Justin whispered, as quietly as he could.

Brian's whole body went tense. "I can't," he whispered back. "If I could," and then he trailed off.

Justin held his breath, and concentrated on feeling what they had now. This bed, this home, this happiness -- it was perfect. There was nothing more for him to hope for.

"This is all you'll get," Brian said, looking away. "I can't go any further than this." He sounded a tiny bit annoyed, a tiny bit angry at having to admit it.

"This is fine," Justin said, and kissed him, and made himself smile. Brian relaxed, and closed his eyes again. Justin pushed it back down again, tried to remember how far they'd come, and to forget a hundred public demonstrations of how much further other men could go.

 

* * * * *


End file.
